Cet Homme

Leonard Cohen jumped me in an internet back alley today

and took me "a thousand kisses deep", over and over again.

You'll see what I mean at 5:55 in this video when

he delivers a version of his poem of that name.

"I'm Your Man" is a good song, but it was the poem

that sealed the deal for me.

A Thousand Kisses Deep

by Leonard Cohen

Don’t matter if the road is long

Don’t matter if it’s steep

Don’t matter if the moon is gone

And the darkness is complete

Don’t matter if we lose our way

It’s written that we’ll meet

At least, that’s what I heard you say

A thousand kisses deep

I loved you when you opened

Like a lily to the heat

You see, I’m just another snowman

Standing in the rain and sleet

Who loved you with his frozen love

His second hand physique

With all he is and all he was

A thousand kisses deep

I know you had to lie to me

I know you had to cheat

You learned it on your father’s knee

And at your mother’s feet

But did you have to fight your way

Across the burning street

When all our vital interests lay

A thousand kisses deep

I’m turning tricks

I’m getting fixed

I’m back on boogie street

I’d like to quit the business

But I’m in it, so to speak

The thought of you is peaceful

And the file on you complete

Except what I forgot to do

A thousand kisses deep

Don’t matter if you’re rich and strong

Don’t matter if you’re weak

Don’t matter if you write a song

The nightingales repeat

Don’t matter if it’s nine to five

Or timeless and unique

You ditch your life to stay alive

A thousand kisses deep

The ponies run

The girls are young

The odds are there to beat

You win a while, and then it’s done

Your little winning streak

And summon now to deal with your invincible defeat

You live your life as if it’s real

A thousand kisses deep

I hear their voices in the wine

That sometimes did me seek

The band is playing Auld Lang Syne

But the heart will not retreat

There’s no forsaking what you love

No existential leap

As witnessed here in time and blood

A thousand kisses deep

Leonard Cohen and his website

Go deep!

x0,

N2

'Mater Matters

It took until the end of August and into September for the tomatoes to really start to ripen well this year. But ripen they finally did, I am here to report.

'maters and the purple beans. Grew these beans from seed my neighbor Ren saved. She didn't get many purple beans, but got the purple speckled "neighbor beans" from seed I saved. So we both had neighbor beans.

I was picking a basket this size about every four days for the three weeks before I left CA.

Real slicin' 'maters - big red "Mortgage Lifters", yellow "Purple Smudge" and little but tasty "Black Brandywine". The salsa was great for breakfast with local eggs, avocado and corn tortillas.

Fabulous just to look at in the afternoon kitchen light.

I ate as many as I could, gave some away (that double-sized "Big Yellow Oxheart" in the top picture went to my son and daughter in law in San Francisco, where the garden tomatoes didn't quite make it this year), and made several batches of baked tomato sauce. Couldn't be easier: olive oil the 9/12 glass dish, cut tomatoes in quarters, put in dish with several un-peeled cloves of garlic, bake at 350 for 1/2 hour and then leave in the warm oven overnight. Presto: tomato sauce to freeze. (I squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins into the sauce after it is done and take out some of the tomato skins.)

They were still comin on pretty strong, so I had to pack these up in a big plastic container and bring them with me in my carry on when I flew over to France. I haven't found this variety of heirloom tomatoes in our fabulous Saturday market in Revel, at least thus far. Can't wait to buy eggs from the sweet farm wives, olives out of a big half barrel, walnut bread with levain nature and local goat cheese and yogurt au marché le matin.

More soon from Soreze.
Bises,
N2

Turn Around

TURN AROUND

Written by: Harry Belafonte, Alan Greene & Malvina Reynolds

Where are you going

My little one, little one

Where are you going

My baby, my own

I know, it is past time for some pictures of the Grand Boy.

I was talking to a friend this morning about pictures of the boy and the blog and realized what has been keeping me from writing a new post about the boy: talking about him just makes me sadder that he has moved back to Brooklyn =,o}... Well, there. It's out.

So, here's a couple from just before they left...

Turn around and you’re two
Turn around and you’re four
Turn around and you’re a young boy
Going out of the door

He'd just started being interested in food. With a vengeance! When we gave him his first bite of white Babcock peach (picture on the left), well suck really, since he doesn't even have a tooth nub yet, he didn't stop gnawing until all the juice was gone, then wiggled and skooched in a demand for more.

Turn around and you’re tiny

Turn around and you’re grown

Turn around and you’re a young wife

With babes of your own

Turn around, turn around

Turn around and you’re a young wife

With babes of your own

We took him up to the Eel River at the beginning of August to stay in a cabin we have been renting for a few days each summer since his mom, the Dear Daughter, was nine months old.

He sussed out that leaves floating on water thing, got to sit at the campfire one night while he fell asleep in his mama's arms, and got to chomp on some ambrosia melon and suck up a ripe apricot. Some Fun!

Hey, Mom! Don't take a picture, my face is all mushy.

My dear friend LC was up at the Eel River with us this year. She captured this family portrait.

And this one of me and the Corn Tiger.

I feel those little lips on my neck every time I look at it.

Turn around and they’re young

Turn around and they’re old

Turn around and they’re gone

And we’ve no one to hold

Turn around, turn around

Turn around and they’re gone

And we’ve no one to hold

This may all seem like just so much bathos, but that is just how I'm feeling about the boy these days when I get out the pictures, i.e. not sure whether to laugh or cry.

More soon.

Love for now.

x0

N2

Back from Whidbey

Yeah, I know, I have been MfB (Missing from Blogland) for awhile now, but, you know how it can get. Real Life just takes over sometimes. In a Good Way.

This last chapter, which I am going to write about first in order to build the suspense...(you haven't had pictures of the Corn Tiger for awhile...), takes place at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, Washington, where I spent nine days, August 13-22nd, for the time, at the Whidbey Writers Workshop Summer Residency.

I am still in the after glow. What a wonderful, nurturing time we had! And I am sure I do not speak for myself alone.

Many of us, including the teachers, live in the "writer's quarters" on the fort (left picture below), old officer's base housing and/or barracks, from which it is a quick walk to class (right picture below, discussion after the Fiction Workshop class).

We attend small group lectures with writers such as award winning non-fiction authors Tim Eagan (right picture below, being watched by David Wagoner; books: The Worst Hard Time, Breaking Blue, etc.) and Scott Russell Sanders (books: Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist's Journey, etc.), contemporary "laugh out loud" novelist, Mary Guterson (books: We Are All Fine Here and Going to the Dogs), poet Marvin Bell, who taught for forty years at the Iowa Writers Workshop and has retired to Port Townsend, WA, (books: Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press) , Rampant, Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000, etc.), CYA and adult novelist Anjali Banerjee (books: Sea Glass Summer, Invisible Lives, etc.) and Virginia Euwer Wolff, author of the award winning, young adult series Make Lemonade.

We learn more techniques for the crafting of fiction, poetry, non fiction and children's literature from teachers such as Kathleen Alcala, Bruce Holland Rogers, Wayne Ude, David Wagoner, Carolyn Wright, Lawrence (Larry) W Cheek, Ana Maria Spagna, Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (right hand picture above) and Bonnie Becker, who have collectively won too many awards and published far too many books to list here. Go check out the faculty page for the Whidbey Writers Workshop here and/or click on the links inserted at their names above.

During breaks and after workshop, lectures, readings, and meals, we walk on the beach or up to the lighthouse, ride bikes and get together to socialize. This year was the 1st Annual W3 Polar Bear Swim -

--see the hardy souls getting ready. They said the water was "not that cold",

and the first, well, at least in my experience, bonfire at the beach --

It was a beautiful night and a fabulous residency. Can't wait to do it again next year!

Keeses,

N2

Jr Space Ranger

Let's see, how do you start this thing?

Maybe pressing here and here...

OK! Turn this way for Saturn...

Uumm...Nana...

You're standing right in the middle of my space field...

This boy makes me giggle.

Keeses.

N2

Possibilities

From Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny

Leo astrology reading for this last week

for all Leo birthday celebrants out there

in which good company I also count myself.

According to Hawaiian mythology, the soul leaves the body during the night to seek the adventures known as dreams. The place of departure and re-entry is the "soul pit" (lua’uhane), which is located in the tear duct of the eye. During the next few nights, I'd love for you to send your soul flying out though your soul pit for some daring exploits that will revitalize your lust for life. Take your backlog of stored-up tears along with you, and pour them down like rain on the secret garden you've been neglecting. The garden will respond to the downpour with a big growth spurt.

The garden seems to be responding.

How are your dream and real life gardens growing?

Keesses!

N2

Young Love

Time is a flyin by here. Met up with the Dear Daughter and Corn Tiger a week ago to introduce him to my friend Anne before she flew the coop for France. She left this past Wednesday. See what I mean about time and flyin?!


Anne and I have led somewhat parallel lives -- oldest daughters of large families with three boys (hers, 6 kids, mine, 10), still occupying the same apartments we moved into in SF in 1976 (hers in the Inner Mission, mine in the Richmond district), and have both been spending some months in southwestern France for the past few years, in the same little village of Soreze (look up in the right corner of ye blogge; I changed the slide show to give you a glimpse of the village).

Due to different schedules of residence in that little village, we just met in France last year, and have since been meeting up in San Francisco while we have both been on this side. Anne is a talented painter and you can get a feel for her work at her website: Anne Subercaseaux


Didn't even get to see my Little Love in person last week (this photo is from the week before), only talked to him on the phone with commentary by the Daughter. He is very talkative for such a little guy, not quite 4 months old now, but then, he is growing as fast as weeds in the summer garden.

And he already has his first crush, on his beautiful mom. You can see it in the look on his face in the picture below. Doesn't that look just say "Ah, there she is, the One!" And, of course, the feeling is mutual, you can see that too.

I went by to see them on my way out of the city. Corn Tiger was nappin on the boob, but woke up while his mom I were talking. They share that same coppery shade of red hair. (Six out of ten kids in our family had red hair, contrary to the "recessive" nature of that gene, and CT's dad has red in his beard.)

And the love! Oh My Heart! Gotta get my hands on those two this week.

Warm Baby Hugs!

x0

N2

Blue Sunday

It was such a solitary and quiet Sunday after the busyness of the last holiday weekend.

But the flowers kept me company.

Big blue kisses.

x0

N2

First Hickey

I spent some time in a hotel room this weekend with a younger man and we shared our first hickey.

(Mine and his....You have to watch out for those nursing babies, in a pinch they'll latch on to the closest available skin.

And, believe it or not, I've never gotten a hickey before.)

"Wait! You said there wouldn't be pictures."

We have met the paparazzi and they are us.

There were chaperones involved...

As you might suspect from the beautiful bouquet, the Daughter was a member of the wedding party of a dear girl friend who grew up around the corner in the Burg. I was a guest and on Nana duty at the hotel while the gals go ready, during the ceremony outside at the Sand Francisco Presidio and at the reception at the officer's club there. It was a beautiful day and a lovely event.

I didn't get a lot of pictures, since my hands were tied up with the Corn Tiger.

Here's a rather fuzzy shot of two of the gorgeous bridesmaids.

The oldest guest, the bride's granny, wanted her picture taken with the youngest.

CT was done with posing by this time.

Which just meant that I got to do more rocking of and singing to the baby boy.

Gotta get it while I can.

Hickeys all 'round!

x0

N2

A Bunch of Fireworks

Kind of looks like a fireworks bouquet, non?!

Hope you had a friendly gathering and got to see fireworks light the sky.

x0

N2